Bush-Gonzales Favor Roman Law Over British Law

From the Takoma Park List Serve:

Under the British-inspired legal system, you tend to have a right unless it is specifically taken away. Under the Roman type of legal system, you tend not to have rights unless they are granted to you. Interesting how a Harvard educated lawyer like that little toady Gonzales can apply the interpretation of the latter to the former.
I wonder if Scalia and Alito would concur (as for Thomas, as long it is authoritarian, it goes)
A.

YES! Exactly, Alain. And since our system recognizes itself as beginning with the received law of Britain already established in the colonies (and this has been stated in Supreme Court decisions), you can understand why Spector was stammering with incredulity. We take the Magna Carta as part of our received law and that is the source of habeas corpus.

It's why our legal system is one evolved from the British common law and why we sometimes refer to it as Anglo-American law. We are not a civil law or Napoleonic code nation (excepting Louisiana), we are a common law system. Harvard Law School should be ashamed.

And this highlights an important difference between a bad Democratic lawyer and a bad Republican lawyer: the Democrat contests the meaning of "is" and the Republican questions the right of habeas corpus.

Valerie
Spruce